Seats of Power : Celebrities’ Chairs Are Auctioned to Raise Money to Feed the Hungry

A chair that touched Madonna’s tush brought $225, but the big bucks went for celebrity seating from City Hall and the White Sox’s old stadium as furniture linked to the famous was auctioned to feed the hungry.

A rocking chair used by First Lady Barbara Bush when she read to children during a stop on her literacy campaign brought $60 at Thursday’s auction. An orange plastic stadium seat thrown in by Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight sold for $150.

In all, 32 chairs fetched $5,085 for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which distributes 20 million pounds of food a year throughout northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana.

“I was amazed. I didn’t think we’d do so well,” said auctioneer Leslie Hindman, whose Antique Center gallery was the site of the event. “You can never tell how it will go with a charity auction.”

The biggest money-maker was a folding chair from old Comiskey Park that has seated Carlton Fisk, the Chicago White Sox’s catcher. The Fisk chair fetched $1,150, $100 more than a visitors’ chair from City Hall dating to the Administration of late Mayor Richard J. Daley.

“I’ve always had a great admiration for the mayor’s office, regardless of who was in there,” said Ron Onesti, 28, a sporting-goods store owner who bought the light-green upholstered chair.

The woman who won the bidding war for Fisk’s white, leather-padded chair left immediately afterward and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Diego DeAstis, who shelled out $225 for the seat Madonna sat in during a 1988 dinner at Carlucci’s restaurant, said he wanted something connected to the pop star.

“I’m a big fan,” said DeAstis, 34, an office equipment salesman. He said he would keep the chair with a turquoise leather seat in his bedroom “where nobody can get near it except me.”

Many of the chairs were donated by restaurants where celebrities dined. Restaurateurs had recorded the historic moments on the bottom of the seats, said Mary McCall, a publicist for one of the auction organizers.

Some celebrities, including Playboy boss Christie Hefner, donated their own chairs. Hefner’s leather-and-chrome boardroom seat--along with a year’s subscription to Playboy--fetched $120.

A bench from the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church--which survived the great Chicago Fire of 1871--sold for $225.

The Chicago Literacy Council provided the chair used by Barbara Bush, while Knight--who once threw a chair in the heat of a basketball game--turned over one of his own.

“It’s going to live for a million years,” McCall said of Knight’s chair, which the coach autographed. “It’s going to outlast me and probably you, too.”